


iii. quiet kind of way

by e_sattler



Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: AU, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-11
Updated: 2020-01-11
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:55:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21759442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/e_sattler/pseuds/e_sattler
Summary: Omera Jocasta doesn't exactly need a detail, but that doesn't stop the Secret Service from giving her one anyway.
Relationships: The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)/Omera (Star Wars)
Comments: 30
Kudos: 172





	1. morning one

“What’s your name?”

“Agent Djarin, ma’am.”

“You know that’s not what I meant.”

Omera Jocasta couldn’t help it. Her father had been president for all of a month and she was already tired of her Secret Service detail, though her protests had fallen on deaf ears and the fact that she was a grown woman living on her own in a completely different state didn’t seem to matter either. She’d coalesced eventually when the agent had shown up and not taken no for an answer but that didn’t mean that she was thrilled with the weapon he carried or his seemingly unfeeling stoicism.

It had taken a while to get used to his constant presence but Omera couldn’t exactly claim that it was a burden. Agent Djarin only spoke to her when she directly addressed him and it was usually simple answers. He never seemed to react to anything in any capacity. If he was bothered by her constant desire to _go go go_ , it didn’t show. Still, despite his slim frame and quiet face, he intimidated her.

That morning, she’d woken up in a mood. The farm cooperative that she’d been working with for the previous four years had asked her to not return as Agent Djarin’s mere existence made them uncomfortable, a sentiment she understood but hated all the same, so when she’d walked into her kitchen to make coffee and seen him out of the corner of her eye on the back porch, she’d been unable to resist the urge.

“Din,” he said after a moment. Djarin was taller than Omera but not by much and though he was dressed in the perennial black suit and tie every day, he was freezing in Portland that February morning. When she’d come outside with a cup of coffee, he’d taken a moment to watch the steam curl in the air before resuming his standard twelve-three-six-nine scan. It wasn’t that he was forbidden from talking to her; in fact, it was encouraged that he develop a rapport. It was that he didn’t do rapport with anyone. Asking his name was pushing it already. “I’m named after my father, before you ask. I’m aware it’s an unusual name.”

“My name is _Omera_ ,” she replied with a dry laugh. There was something about the conversation that felt inorganic and stilted, and she realized after a moment that it was that he never looked at her when he spoke. She understood, of course, but that didn’t make it any less disconcerting. In fact, she thought, it may have been an intentional attempt to make him seem less human and to detach her from him, though she wasn't sure that was possible given that they spent twenty four hours a day together. The thought crossed her mind all the same and though the sun had only peeked over the horizon, Omera couldn't stop the next question when it was born in loamy curiosity.“Are you married, Agent Djarin?”

He hesitated. “Not anymore, ma’am.”

“Any kids?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The answer surprised her. “You have kids and you do _this_ for a living?” Omera asked, unable to even begin to wrap her mind around having a child and being simultaneously willing to risk your life for someone.

“My wife and son are both dead, ma’am.” Din hated the way the answer hung heavy in the air and he took a moment to look at where Omera was blushing furiously behind her coffee mug. “It’s alright. You didn’t know.”

He was right. She hadn’t known, though she realized in that moment that she might have heard something from her father’s head detail about Djarin being a good fit because of what had happened to him. All the more reason to wonder why that was the case given the circumstances, but she wasn’t about to question it. “Favorite color?”

He laughed at that, a low breath of a sound that twitched the corner of his mouth up before he waxed still again. “Blue, ma’am. A certain shade of blue in particular,” he said after a moment. “I don’t mind talking about them, you know. I just-”

“Don’t know if I want to hear it?”

“Don’t know if it’s appropriate yet,” he corrected. The subject of Fennec and Yidi’s death was beyond the pale, something that he didn’t talk about with anyone other his government ordered and issued therapist. He couldn’t imagine the emotional burden that came along with the knowledge for anyone else and for that reason, he kept it to himself. Truthfully, Din didn’t feel like a widower, given the state of his marriage when his wife had died, but the agony of losing his boy was a wound that never even came close to healing and even mentioning him in passing put a pit in his stomach. “What’s yours?”

“I’m sorry?” Omera asked. Her mind had started to wander on the thought of him with a wife and a son, and she couldn’t help but wonder if he’d been carefree and happy with them. The thought alone made her feel impossibly sad and she had to duck her head to watch the clouds in her coffee for a breath before she continued. “Oh, my favorite color. Lavender.” She paused. “Why the Secret Service?”

Din hummed a sound in acknowledgement and nodded, hands clasped behind his back as he shifted his weight on his feet. “I wanted to serve my country, ma’am,” he said, slanting her a look and offering her a small smile. “I was adopted from Nicaragua at birth, I owe everything to the US. I enlisted in the military when I was eighteen, did twelve years in Special Ops, and was an officer in the Navy for another two before I received the letter of intent from the department. It’s a great honor to do what I do-”

“You’re only thirty-two?” Omera interrupted him, her brow pinched in confusion. "What's your rank?"

“No, ma’am. I'm forty-two and I was a captain when I retired. I served President Bartlet and President Santos before your father,” he corrected gently. Thirty-two seemed like a different time. He and Fennec had been married for six months when he turned thirty-two, still living in Singapore while his tour ended, and it had been a demonstrably easier life. “Are you going to ask me what my favorite tree is next?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be nice to me?”

“No, ma’am. I’m supposed to protect you with my life, which I will. There’s nothing in the charter that says I can’t be an asshole while doing so,” Din replied. “There will be times that you’ll have to listen to me whether you want to or not. There will be times when I’ll have to handle you and it might not be gentle. There will be times when your plans will be derailed by-”

Omera sighed and waved her hand at him. “I get it, it’s your show,” she said, a hint of irritation in her voice that she knew was misplaced. He was, after all, just doing his job and it was one hell of a time to be doing the job at that.

Her father’s election had been hugely contested, won by swaying the electoral college and losing the popular vote. He was a farmer-turned-governor from the low country with simple views, not unlike Carter, and had run on a platform of change. Until he’d added Vinnick, the former Secretary of State, as his running mate, Naó Jocasta had never actually thought he was going to win. But he had won and just like that, Omera had helped her two sisters, Anye and Portia, pack up their bedrooms to get ready for a move to the White House, all the while begging her to come with them instead of returning to Oregon after the move. She’d considered it for a moment but in the end, the desire to lead her own life had persevered.

All the same, Omera felt a twinge of homesickness for the fields in Bowman. Montana was God’s country, her father used to tell them, and the way that she’d grown up waist deep in crystal clear water with the freedom to roam confirmed that he was right. She swallowed around the odd lump in her throat and took another sip of her coffee. “Agent Haldo said that she thinks I’m in danger,” she said finally as she shifted in her chair to look up at him. “Do you think I’m in danger?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Why?”

“Because your father is the president of the United States and you’re unattached and beautiful, ma’am.”

Omera snorted an uncontrollable laugh. “That’s forward, Agent Djarin,” she said with a smile, but she couldn’t help wondering if the thought had merit. Oddly, she didn’t think he was flirting with her. Perhaps it was the matter of fact way that he’d said it or that they’d just finished talking about his wife and son that made her feel somewhat at ease by the sentiment. “The Bartlet daughters were older when they came to the White House, right? None of them even lived there.”

“Zoey did, ma’am. For a few years, until she went to college,” Din corrected gently. He had fond memories of his time with the Bartlet family and wondered, his mind wandering, how they all were doing before he continued. “I’ve never been assigned to an external subject, however. This is the first time I’ve worked outside of DC in a long time.”

“Subject? Do I at least get a cool code name?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“What is it?”

“What do you want it to be?”

“Well,” she said, taking a moment to turn it over in her mind. “What’s yours?”

Agent Djarin turned to fully face her then, his shoulders tensing for a moment under the question before he relaxed again. “Hijo,” he said, his voice tilting a little with the Spanish like he was remembering a lover. “Your father’s is Ahab.”

“Didn’t Ahab go mad trying to find that whale?” Omera asked, an amused smile ticking higher until she was laughing. “Oh, don’t tell him that, he’ll be furious. Well, furious in his way, which is to say he’ll just tut a lot and then resign to it.” She let her smile fade and turned her chin up to watch the sky for a moment before glancing at him again. “Clover.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Din said without asking why. He filed the knowledge away to include in his field notes and turned back to watch the perimeter wall. “Do you want to finish your breakfast and get ready for the day or are we going to spend seven hours sitting on the back porch talking about my favorite colors?”

“If you can wax poetic about blue for seven hours, don’t let me stop you,” Omera said, though she was pushing to stand all the same. When she crossed him, she paused and nodded once. “Good morning, Agent Djarin.”

Din nodded in return. “Good morning, ma’am.”


	2. morning four hundred and ninety six

It had been seventeen months since her father had been elected president and Omera wasn't any more used to having Djarin around. They’d traveled the world together at that point, though she could hardly call their relationship friendly given that he’d become even more taciturn as the months had dragged on. The setup wasn’t exactly ideal; she worked from home most days and only left to go for a run in the morning, something she was sure Agent Djarin hated as much as she did though he never gave any indication that he couldn’t run indefinitely. That morning, they’d left before the sun had hauled itself over the horizon, the stars still dotting the sky and the air a special kind of warm where it hugged their bodies. 

“Are you doing anything for the Fourth?” Omera asked, her voice choppy under her labored breathing. She knew the answer already, that he would be doing whatever it was that she was doing (which was nothing) but she still liked poking the bear all the same. The silence drove her insane and they spent most of their time in, though that didn’t stop her from trying to get water from a stone with his body language or lack thereof.

Din slanted her a look, his cap pulled down over his eyes to shade his face a little but doing nothing to hide the amusement on his face. “You tell me, ma’am,” he said seriously. Their strides were fairly matched, with him at an easy amble and her a full jog, and while he hated running more than just about anything else in the world, he did enjoy the routine and, if he were being honest with himself, the time out of the house. “I take it you won’t be going back to DC for the president’s party.”

Omera snorted a sound and shook her head, her ponytail bouncing with each step. “I have zero interest in spending twelve hours roundtrip on a plane for a two hour event, which I realize sounds ungrateful and spoiled, but they shot at me the last time we went home.”

“Technically they were shooting at your father and you were just inconveniently placed.”

“Do they not teach tact at Annapolis?”

“No, ma’am.”

She could believe it. In the year and a half they’d been partnered, she’d never heard him raise his voice or act out in any way other than that night and as they fell back into companionable silence, she couldn’t help but let her mind wander. She knew his rigidity wasn't unfounded and it wasn't any wonder why.

_ “You’ll have to stay close to me.” _

_ “It’s Congress, Djarin. Do you really think Palpatine’s going to take up arms during the State of the Union?” _

_ The lobby of the Capitol Building was full to the brim with people, senators and congressmen and women alike chatting and laughing as if the concept of partisan politics had never existed. President Jocasta’s first State of the Union was on the horizon and while Omera had wanted nothing more than to not come, she’d acquiesced at her sisters’ insistence. For her agreement, she’d gotten to put on a dress and play the part to her heart’s content. _

_ She felt silly once she was there, however. Omera had never had what anyone would consider to be a traditional job and ran out of niceties to talk about with her father’s supporters by the end of cocktail hour. Her dress was tighter than she would have liked but her sister had gone through options on Facetime and vetoed everything else except for the burnt orange pencil dress with the little bronze medallions at the waist that Anye had bought her for Christmas the year earlier. It felt suffocating once they were there and Omera couldn’t help but stick close to Djarin even without being prompted. _

_ “Don’t say things like that,” he said, his voice impossibly low in the space between them. For his part, Din had traded his black suit for a charcoal grey one with a discrete red, white, and blue patterned tie, and he couldn’t help but think that they clashed a little when she’d met him at the car.  _

_ “Is there some moratorium on dry humor?” she asked, smiling warmly to the senator from Texas when she introduced herself before walking away just as quickly. “What did she say her name was?” _

_ “Julissa Felce-Maduro and no, there’s nothing that says you can’t be droll and cynical, ma’am.” _

_ Omera rolled her eyes. If possible, Djarin had gotten even more contentious in the time since he’d moved to Oregon with her for reasons she could only begin to imagine, but she’d tried to keep the peace regardless. She’d noticed how well he’d cleaned up, not that he wasn’t always immaculately put together, and had half a mind to tell him as much when the chandelier exploded. _

_ There was a moment of stunned silence as the chaos erupted under a hail of gunfire. The screams were guttural, like an animal caught in a cage, and Omera had only a breath of recognition before Din had grabbed her around the waist and taken her to the ground. Plaster rained from the wall over her head and she felt like she was out of body as he dragged her with him, unable to hear anything he was saying over her own panicked shrieks.  _

_ A moment and then another, and Omera had the vague awareness that everything hurt from where he’d pulled her down but before she had a chance to process it, Din had hauled her to her feet again and was shoving her along, his arms still curved over her head and Agent Dune at her back. _

_ “Bamboo Shoot!” Dune yelled over the chaos, one hand at Omera’s back and the other fisted in Djarin’s jacket to keep them together. Omera knew that code if nothing else: Bamboo Shoot was the emergency protocol for an active attack on the president. _

_ “Where’s my father?!” Omera screamed, tears cutting through the grit on her face as her panic turned over and over until she was sick, violently ill with a great gasping heave. They didn’t stop moving even with her reaction, pushing her along until Dune had shoved them both into the motorcade and slammed the door on her way back in.  _

_ The silence was stark and immediate, no din of disaster pushing past the bulletproof windows of the car once they were moving. She blinked, once and then again, and felt the shake start in her legs, moving higher until she was trembling completely. “Din, is my father dead?” _

_ “I don’t know,” he answered honestly, his voice thin around the lump in his throat. Din reached to catch her face between his hands and turned it side to side before tipping her chin up and down so that he could push his fingers through her hair. When his hands came back clear of blood, he ran them quickly over her chest and down her sides before reaching around her back to check along the length of her spine and her ribs. “Are you hurt, ma’am?” _

_ “My father, is my father-where are my sisters!” Omera couldn’t focus on anything outside of the nauseated adrenaline that was feeding her mind and body. “I’m not-what just happened?!” _

_ “There was a shooting at the Capitol. I don’t know anything other than that, I’m still-” Din swallowed again and exhaled a breath, reaching to wipe his face mindlessly and scrubbing a hand back through his hair. “Bruno, take us to GW. She needs to get checked out.”  _

_ Omera didn’t have a chance to protest and realized in that moment that she was covered in vomit and blood and plaster dust, and threw Din a startled look. “I’m bleeding.” _

_ “It’s not yours,” he said as he nodded towards where his hand was clamped over his thigh, the blood oozing sickly between his fingers. “It’s fine, it’s just-” _

_ “Oh my God,” Omera said quietly, the wave of nausea uncontrolled before she was sick again. It wracked her body in every way, cramping tight through her stomach and down her thighs as it splashed heavy on her feet. She didn’t have the presence of mind to feel Din rubbing her back or to feel how he’d pulled her hair out of her face. She didn’t feel the way the car swung around the corner or how he pulled her to her feet again when they’d stopped in the bay of the emergency room. Omera didn’t hear or see anything else after that as everything whittled down to a dark dot of panic and then nothing. _

_ She found later when she woke up that she’d passed out and they’d sedated her further. When she woke up, the room was dark and quiet under the steady beep of the heart monitor. She could see two agents outside of the room (Calican and Nadero, she realized later), but it did nothing to soothe her as her breathing picked up. _

_ “Relax,” Din said from where he was sitting next to her bed. He reached and caught her hand, squeezing gently once before he let go and sat back down. “It’s alright, everything’s alright. You’re safe.” _

_ “Where’s my fath-” _

_ “Your father and your sisters are fine, they’re all accounted for. Your sisters are both with their agents and your father is in observation. You’re not hurt but they were worried you hit your head and they wanted to keep an eye on you while the chaos died down,” he said.  _

_ His voice was raspy and broken around a swollen throat and Omera realized on a wild second of clarity that he must have been crying. She swallowed once and wiped her face with the back of her before reaching for his hand again. It was then that she saw that he was wearing scrubs and not his suit, his hair a wreck and arm bandaged, and the image made her sick. “You shouldn’t be in here.” _

_ “I’m fine, ma’am-” _

_ “I think we can drop the formalities now,” she whispered, tears heavy and hot where as they tracked to pool in the hollow of her throat. Omera sniffed pointlessly once and then let the sobs come, devastated and full in her chest. They’d come so close, she thought, to losing it all in a breath. Her sisters-oh, her sweet sisters-must have been terrified and her father, no doubt, felt the weight of the world then. But it wasn’t her family that dragged raw through her grief, at least not for that moment. It was him. “You’re hurt.” _

_ “One to the thigh, in and out, already stitched up,” Din told her as clinically as possible, though he was unable to disguise the wobble in his voice. “The arm is just a graze. You’re okay, that’s what matters.”  _

“Curb.”

Omera blinked once and shook her head to center herself again as she she waved a hand to get him to stop and doubled over breathing heavily. “Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention,” she wheezed before glancing up at him to watch him stretching his hamstrings. It didn’t escape her that he grimaced when he stretched his left leg and she wondered if it was bothering him before she straightened up again. “Can I ask you something?”

“Just did.”

She tilted him a deadpan look but softened all the same when she looked down and then back up at him. The question stuck behind her teeth like honey for a long moment until she was finally able to push it forward. “Do you ever think about what happened?” she asked, deeply uncomfortable in any show of emotion in front of him after that day in January. It had barely been five months and it still felt real. “I think about it all the time.”

Din hesitated for a moment before he nodded. “All the time, ma’am.”

For that instant, Omera felt like she was looking at a lover, someone that she experienced a whole life with, and it lingered until she felt like she wanted to cry. “Let’s keep going,” she said finally, hopeful he didn’t hear the break in her voice.

“Yes ma’am.”


	3. evening six hundred and fifty four

Christmas came as it did every year, in a flurry of wet snow and short days. Portland had that Rockwellian kind of quality about it, if Rockwell had known what hard cider and REI were, and Omera wasn’t uncomfortable there anymore, at least not at a surface level anyway. She’d gotten used to the limitations of her father’s job and even more than that, the limitations of her own trauma. PTSD sounded like a pipe dream of a diagnosis when the nightmares started. She could always taste the bitter adrenaline at the back of her tongue and hated the way that everything about the world seemed to tilt and tumble on its axis until the moment had passed. Still, she tried to keep herself moving forward and was fairly confident that Djarin was trying to do the same.

For his part, Din was stoic as ever. He’d taken his mandatory two weeks off after the shooting, though instead of returning to DC, he’d laid low in Portland so that he could check in with Omera’s stand-in agents when necessary. Blasio wasn’t exactly new to the force but at thirty two, he was the youngest person there and it had taken everything Djarin had in him to not sit the kid down and read him the Riot Act from go.

Omera abhorred it. She despised the sound of Blasio’s voice and the way he regarded her that cool kind of ambivalence that she understood was trained into him but rubbed her the wrong way all the same. When Djarin had come back, it had taken all of Omera’s restraint to not hug him.

That felt like a lifetime ago by then. In the eleven months since then, they’d managed to maintain a somewhat companionable relationship but there was something about the fact that he’d been put in a position to sacrifice his life for hers that made Omera look at Din differently. There was an element of debt to it that she couldn’t quite place but it was more than that too.

The sun had barely tucked behind the horizon when Omera started putting ornaments on the tree in her living room. It was December 3rd and while she had originally planned to not put a tree up at all, her sisters had convinced her that it would make her feel at home and at peace. She’d let herself be convinced, eventually, and once the spruce was standing a little cockeyed in the corner of her living room by the bookshelves, she had to admit that it did make her feel at least a little bit better.

Boxes of ornaments sat stacked next to the fireplace, some opened and rifled through with the others still sealed with the packing tape she’d used two years earlier. The music wasn’t loud enough for her to hear but it was loud enough that she didn’t hear Djarin when he came in to say goodnight.

“I’m going to head out, ma’am-”

Omera startled hard, the ornament she was holding slipping from her grasp to explode into a thousand tiny pieces on the hardwood. “Jesus Christ,” she breathed, a hand gone to press against the panicked skip of her heart as she looked at Djarin and shook her head. “Please don’t do that.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Din said, the tone of his voice unreadable. He hesitated for a moment before he came around the back of the couch and crouched down to pick up the bigger pieces of the ornament while Omera searched for a broom. It was heavy glass, most likely hand-blown he noted, the streaks of gold glinting in the firelight against a light gauzy blue. When she returned, he held it up to her. “This is beautiful.”

“It was,” Omera agreed, though not aggressively. The moment passed in silence as she swept up the fragments and set the dustpan to the side before reaching to take the bigger pieces from his hand so that she could set them aside to repurpose later. “My mother bought it for me in Crete about ten years ago. She liked delicate things.”

“You’ve never-” Djarin caught himself and exhaled a breath through his nose. They were both well aware that she’d never mentioned her mother and they both knew why. Daiane Jocasta had been dead for eight years by then, taken by cancer in a span of six weeks when her husband was running for governor of Montana. It had been an unspeakable sticking point for Jocasta’s running mates, not wanting to drive sympathy votes by offering condolences all the while not wanting to ignore the opportunity to mention the benefit of universal healthcare. Of course, nothing would have saved Daiane, but that didn’t matter anymore. 

He paused and wet his lips, eyes tracking Omera as she moved to pull out another ornament-this one garish and neon, seemingly and curiously made by a child-until he found the right moment to reenter the conversation. “As I was saying,” Din continued. “Agent Dune is here for the evening, so I’ll be headed out.”

“Alright,” Omera answered. She turned her head to look at him over her shoulder and smiled a little, grateful for the dim light in the room so that it hid the way she’d gone splotchy with her fright. “You could stay for a little bit if you’d like. I’m just putting this box up and then I’m going to get dinner.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” he began, only to be cut off by Omera again.

“Don’t do that, I’m asking you to stay,” she said, quieter this time with the knowledge that Cara was most likely within earshot. “I know you’re going to tell me that you’re not allowed to or whatever but I just really would rather not be alone while I’m doing this. My family usually trims the tree together and I always went home for it, even after I’d graduated college and moved out, and it just… feels particularly lonely this year. I’d like for you to stay.”

Din hesitated. He wanted to stay, he knew that much was true, and he wasn’t sure there was anything in the charter from actually forbidding him from lingering in a cordial capacity with another agent on site, but where they were was deeply personal to Omera and, frankly, outside of his scope emotionally. Still, he didn’t move. His shoulders had tensed with the question and he let them relax in inches until he’d slumped into his body a little to sit on the arm of the couch. It was, unquestionably, the least formal he’d ever been around her and on that same thought, he reached to tug the knot of his tie loose and thumb the earpiece from his ear. “Alright,” he said with a shrug. “You convinced me, ma’a-”

“Omera.”

Din swallowed. She was watching him up close then, her eyes tracking the lines of his face like she was committing it to memory, and it made him feel on display. He nodded once, slow and deliberate, and offered her the vaguest hint of a smile. “Omera.”

Her name on his voice sent an odd throb of recognition through her that made her toes curl in her socks against the floor. Omera was sure she was blushing but didn’t acknowledge it, choosing instead to offer him an ornament from the box and gesturing towards the tree. “Nothing below the garland or Maisie will knock them off for fun,” she said as she forced her gaze away from him intentionally.

They worked like that in near silence for half an hour, with him passing her ornaments when he couldn’t figure out where to put one and her rearranging things to her content. When she’d placed the last ornament near the star, Omera climbed down from the step ladder and stood next to Din with her arms crossed over her chest and a pleased look on her face. She took it all in for a moment, following the way the lights and the ribbon dove in and out of branches to flow towards the star and how the light caught on the glass to sparkle against the walls, and leaned to bump shoulders with him. It was then that she realized he had taken his jacket off and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, the light reflecting off his glasses where he’d pushed them up onto his head. “Thank you for your help,” she said finally, unmoving when he shifted carefully to wrap an arm around her shoulders.

Omera felt her breathing go shallow and she didn’t move for a long moment until she unfolded her arms and tucked one around his waist to keep him close. It felt like burning and she wondered if he felt it too, but that was answered for her by the way he stroked her shoulder absently with his thumb and the soft look he tilted her a moment later. She held his gaze, searching his face for some kind of answer to a question she couldn't even conceive, and followed the pull up onto her toes into his space. 

Din tensed but didn’t stop her, the hand on her shoulders gone to tuck her close to his chest. She smelled clean and soft, and he could see the splash of freckles across her nose when she touched their foreheads and steadied herself on his waist, her fingers curling against his sides a little. “I can’t-”

“I know,” she replied quietly. Omera didn’t move from that place for a long moment, his hands impossibly gentle where he’d gripped her ribs and her fingers shaking slightly. The touch of mouth was so soft it might as well have not happened at all and she fought against every urge to deepen it to something dark and drowning. When she thought on it later, she wouldn’t have even called it a kiss, more like a shared glance of breathing and the Gaussian burning that came with it. 

With her that close, his hands on her body and her scent on his clothes, Din found himself at an impasse. They couldn’t go back, even if he wanted to, but what stretched in front of him was equally terrifying and so he did nothing until he had to swallow and tip his head back on his shoulders. “I’m sorry,” he said again, letting her go and reaching to pick his coat up crisply by the collar as he resettled his glasses and gave her a nod. “Ma’am.”

Omera watched him and had to chew the inside of her lip to keep her chin from wobbling, the ache of some latent emotion too much to bear. She turned back to the Christmas tree so that she wouldn’t have to watch him leave and when she heard the front door close, sank to sit on the arm of the couch in silence.


	4. evening six hundred and fifty six

The field office was quiet under the low chatter of radio traffic when Din checked in with Dune on his way out. She didn’t say anything, merely grunted in acknowledgement until he’d gotten close enough that she could speak without having to raise her voice.

“You want to talk about what happened yesterday?” she asked, her eyes still on the report she was checking for accuracy. Cara paused long enough to thumb her earpiece out before she set the report down finally and looked at him with an indescribable look on her face. “It's literally my job to notice everything. You know that, right?”

“I would certainly hope so,” Din muttered, though truthfully, he’d forgotten Cara had even been there, let alone close enough to watch them. The night seemed like a blur, an odd aside tacked onto the end of any impossibly long day, and even though he’d had a few hours to process what exactly had happened (nothing, he told himself, had happened), he wasn’t exactly in a place to shoot the shit with Cara about his semi private personal life. “It was a mistake.”

“Sure it was.”

“I have zero interest in talking about this with you.”

“Yeah, well, you’re on the clock and you owe me a debriefing anyway, so you better get interested.”

He sighed. Expressly, he hadn’t broken any rules but that didn’t make him feel any better. In twelve years with the service, Din had never so much as spoken out of turn, let alone crossed physical boundaries with a mark. He thought back on the Bartlet daughters and their aloof disinterest in their protection, and how that had all changed after Zoey was kidnapped. The thought of it all horrified him, imagining Omera in that place, and he had to physically roll his shoulders to get out of the thought.

“I think I need to be reassigned,” Din said finally. He leaned heavily against the door frame and pushed his glasses up onto his forehead as he rubbed at his eyes. The moment throbbed low and honey hot for a moment before he huffed an irritated sound and thumped his fist against the wall. “Goddammit.”

Cara watched it all with a mild curiosity, her eyes tracking his movements as he bordered on cagey tilting into panicked. She’d known Djarin for ten years, had been there the night of the shooting and worse, and still, she never ceased to be amazed by the audacity of his restraint. “You’ve been at this for a long time, Din,” she said, her voice low and nearly kind. “Maybe retiring wouldn’t be-”

“Okay, we’re not having this conversation,” Din interrupted. He sounded irritated and, if anything, had gotten more tense since they’d started talking. When he took pause, it was to roll his head on his shoulders and bounce his hands as if that would do anything to relieve the tension. 

Omera was all over him in the worst kind of ways, the taste of her mouth and the way her body fit under his hands something he couldn’t ignore. He laid awake sometimes remembering the way she’d pleaded with him for help, for information, for anything when they were in the hospital. It was a shared experience that he wasn’t sure he had any right to and the mere reality of it was too much to conceptualize. 

“I don’t-” He exhaled a rough breath through his nose and let his head fall back against the wall. “Fuck me.”

“Not on your best day,” Cara snorted. She stood then, half a head shorter than Din but not the least bit dwarfed by him when she crossed her arms over her chest and tipped her chin down. “You’re overcomplicating this. There’s a set of rules in the charter for a reason, Djarin. No one gives a shit if you resign your position to fuck the president’s daughter except for you.”

Din winced a little at how crass her words were but he knew she wasn’t wrong. All the same, there were myriad bases to cover before he could even consider that. “It’s not that simple-”

“It could be that simple.”

“Jesus Christ Cara, they’ve only been dead for two years!” he snapped, his voice cracking when he spoke and the color running ruddy in his face. Cara opened her mouth to say something and closed it again when Din waved a hand as if to dismiss her. “Two goddamned years. I can still-” He coughed to clear his throat and dropped his chin so that he was watching his feet before he shook his head. “I can still smell her on some of my clothes. It’s not that simple.”

The silence was painful then, his breathing punctuated by the amble of radio chatter, and when Cara spoke again, it was too soft to be anything but pitying. “Wanting to move on doesn’t make you a bad person, Djarin. It just makes human,” she said. “I know how much you hate that.”

Din sniffed and nodded as he leaned forward to rest his forehead against Cara’s shoulder so that she could rub the back of his neck gently. “I wake up sometimes and still expect him to be pulling on my face to get my attention,” he said, his voice gone thick with grief. “I took this assignment to get out of DC, you know that. I sold the house and boxed up the stuff and left them there so that I could get away from being reminded every single day that I’m alone.”

“Okay, well, you're not alone, so that's rude,” Cara snorted, though there was nothing in her that seemed the least bit mean. She’d been there every step of the way through it all, from the moment Din had been pulled from the senior staff meeting by Capital police until the hours after the funeral when she’d found him asleep at his desk in his office, unable to go home. It felt like a different life.

“I just need time,” Din said finally as he leaned back to look at Cara. He was tear streaked but silent, his jaw working against the lump in his throat. “I’ll see you tomorrow, alright?”

Cara nodded. “Get some sleep, Din.”

_“You have to let him try things, baby. He’s two, he’s not going to break.”_

_“He’s going to break when he bounces off the ground if he falls off the back of the couch.”_

_Fennec rolled her eyes and reached behind her to grab Yidi’s ankle when he launched himself over her shoulder so that she could haul him back and drop him into his father’s lap. “I would almost be more concerned if you weren’t being overbearing and neurotic,” she said with a smile before shifting enough to tuck against Din’s side as he wrapped an arm around her shoulders and cradled their son up against his chest. “Lay down, Bear. Watch the movie.”_

_Yidi was the spitting image of his mother, from his blue black hair to his perfect almond eyes, and everything about him burned with Fennec’s fire and rage for life, audacious in the way he tested their limits day in and day out. Becoming a father had never been on Din’s radar and he suspected not on Fennec’s either, but it had become the normal and it wasn’t one that he hated. Whether or not she felt the same way about having to leave the service remained to be seen._

_“He doesn’t want to watch the movie,” Din pointed out when Yidi squirmed to lay upside down in Din’s lap, kicking his father square in the face with his restless feet and pulling a dramatic groan from under Din’s ribs. “Stars, call the ambulance,” he swooned, wrapping the boy up in a tight hug and rolling to the floor dramatically as Yidi dissolved into giggles. “I’ve been had.”_

_“The great Agent Djarin, felled by a spy in his own home,” Fennec replied grandly. She grabbed Yidi around the waist and stood as she spun him in a circle to fly over the back of the couch and into the kitchen. “A man of high, high honor.”_

_Din smiled at the ceiling, his glasses kicked crooked and hair a little wild, and settled there on his back with his hands on his stomach. He heard Fennec moving through the house in a quick half jog and he’d almost stood up again when she dropped Yidi back onto the couch clutching his Yoda doll. “May the Force be with you,” he said seriously to his son when he peered over the edge of the couch._

_“And also with you,” Fennec replied, offering Din a hand up and sighing when he hauled her down with him. She settled on his chest and propped up on an elbow, letting her head bounce when Yidi pushed it with his toes before she ducked to kiss Din gently. “I love you.”_

_Din smiled, his fingers soft at Fennec’s jaw when he cupped her face. “I love you too.”_

The room jolted and Din woke up with a hard shudder, eyes struggling to focus in the dark before he managed to grab for his glasses and look at the clock. The glow told him brutally that it was 3:13 AM and he let himself lay back heavily against the pillows to blink at the ceiling. 

“Just a dream,” he murmured, the realization making him heart sore. It was always just a dream.


	5. morning seven hundred and three

“He’s not going to win.”

“Djarin-”

“I wasn’t asking a question, I’m telling you that he’s not going to win.” 

Omera glanced up from where she was tucked into the chair at her desk with her feet up under her to level Din a deadpan look. “I think I enjoyed your company more when you didn’t feel like you could speak freely,” she said. 

Djarin almost smiled as he leaned back a little so that he could set his weight against the doorframe and crossed his arms over his chest and his legs at the ankle to balance his weight on a heel. “I’m not sure you ever enjoyed my company, ma’am, least of all when I didn’t feel like I could speak freely.”

She couldn’t argue with that.

It had been three months since Din had been reassigned, or rather had chosen to be reassigned, and Omera wasn’t sure it had been for the best. She didn’t dislike Agent Dune and, in a lot of ways, her presence was less stressful than Djarin’s, but Omera couldn’t shake the unwieldy feeling that she’d put them in that place. The thought alone was enough to make her consider her own motivations for having him there and while she’d done her best, she couldn’t ignore what had happened over Christmas as being demonstrably short sighted and, worse, childish.

That morning was quiet, though, not unlike the first ones they’d spent together while she was unpacking her house in Portland. Djarin had stopped by to drop something off with Cara and it hadn’t taken too much cajoling for him to stay for coffee when Omera had asked nicely. It was an odd thing to see him in jeans and a sweater but Omera tried to put the thought out of her mind even as she sketched quick glances along the slim lines of his body.

“When was the last time we had a one term president that didn’t have a scandal?” she asked. When Din didn’t respond immediately, Omera picked up her coffee and took a sip before gesturing to him with the cup. “He hasn’t done anything wrong, Din. There’s no reason for him to not win reelection.”

“All due respect, ma’am-”

“Cut the shit.”

“People don’t like him, Omera,” Din said with a shrug. He knew it was the truth, even if Omera didn’t want to hear it. President Jocasta had enjoyed a momentary spike in popularity after the attempt on his life and the ensuing investigation had yielded him a few more months of grace, but on the whole, the country was struggling. Santos had left him a booming economy, high seventies approval ratings, and unemployment in the single digits. The Dow had soared above thirty thousand for the first time in history and the OPEC sanctions that Santos had levied had kept gas under two dollars a gallon for two years. It had been, more than ever before, a time of prosperity, and by all accounts, all Jocasta had to do was stay the course.

That hadn’t happened in a big way.

Din knew it was the truth even if Omera didn’t want to hear it because he’d had his thumb on the pulse of her public perception in the three years since her father had taken office. She was seen as a recluse, as deeply impersonal and even standoffish. It was offensive to him, he thought sometimes, the suggestion that she was anything less than warm and gentle, kind and compassionate, but he knew that she’d carefully curated a personality of being closed off out of a desire to stay out of harm’s way. It was defensive and she wore it well.

He took a breath before he continued. “The country wants the illusion of safety, even if we’re not in peacetime. War with Iran didn’t exactly sell the idea that we’re coming out of this unscathed.”

“Did you vote for him?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Did you vote for my father?” Omera asked again. She’d unfolded from her chair to stand and lean back against the desk, mirroring Din’s posture as she watched him with an implacable expression. 

Din was quiet for a moment before he huffed a humorless laugh and shook his head. “No.”

“Neither did I,” she replied, her smile a little embarrassed. Omera caught her bottom lip under her teeth and wrinkled her nose. “I voted for Seaborn.”

At that, Din laughed, honest and bright in a way that crinkled the corners of his eyes and softened his face. “I did too,” he admitted, the smile glancing until he waxed calm again. “Sam’s a good man and he would have been a wonderful president. I think he still might.”

“You think he can defeat a sitting president?”

“I think he can defeat your father,” Din clarified. He paused to take a sip of his coffee, the mug weighty in his hand in a good way that felt like home. She’d pushed it at him before he’d even had a chance to protest and he couldn’t find it in himself to say it bothered him. “When I worked for the Bartlets, my wife was close with an attorney in the council’s office named Ainsley Hayes-”

“The Congresswoman from Charlotte?”

Din nodded. “Fennec and Ainsley spent a lot of time together outside of work and that meant that I spent a lot of time around Seaborn. He’s a little aloof and needlessly optimistic but his politics are in the right place and he’s learned some pragmatism over the last decade.”

Omera listened as he spoke and tried to imagine Din as a young man, working grind hours in the field as his wife befriended White House staff. The thought made her snort a laugh and it didn’t fail her that it caught his attention. “Sorry, I was just… didn’t it make your life hard for your wife to be friends with your work?”

“Fennec never did anything to make my life easier,” he answered, almost droll in his response. It felt uncouth to speak ill of her when she was gone but at the same time, it was a comfort after so long to be able to talk about her without wanting to rage. “She was… uncontrollable. Wickedly smart, incredibly sensitive with a quick trigger for emotions, but almost completely devoid of empathy for anyone but herself. We met when we were nineteen and never really got a chance to know each other outside of work before we got married, which was… a markedly stupid idea, all things considered.”

Hearing him talk about his wife unguarded for the first time humanized Din to Omera in a way she hadn’t realized she’d been resisting. He really was a gentle soul, she thought as she watched him thumb absently at his finger where she suspected he was missing a wedding band. “I really am sorry,” she said, unsure of what the right thing to say to him was. “Was she a good mother?”

The question caught Din offguard in a good way that tugged at the constant ache in his heart that never truly went away. He nodded once as he tugged his wallet out of his back pocket to thumb a well loved picture out for Omera to see. “She was a wonderful mother,” he said quietly when she took the picture. “Not that it was hard. He was the perfect baby.”

Omera handled the picture with careful fingers as if she were holding something delicate and precious. It was foxed at the edges and a little worn but told a story all by itself. Fennec was on her back with a boy no more than that one mid flight above her, her arms outstretched to catch him and his face full of joy as he watched someone, she assumed Din, out of the frame. It seemed almost copacetic, the suggestion of a life he’d left behind out of necessity instead of choice. “He’s beautiful,” she said. “I… what-”

“Car accident,” he answered, sparing her having to ask. “She died immediately and he held on long enough for me to get back from Pittsburg.”

The room felt small and dark then despite the sunlight pouring in through the windows and she was moving before she realized where she was headed. He didn’t stop her when she curled her arms around his waist and tucked close, her head under his chin and ear turned against his chest. Omera could hear the steady even throb of his heart and wasn’t surprised when he settled there, a hand flat on her back and the other cupped gently against the nape of her neck to sweep a gentle thumb against her hairline. “I don’t know how you do this every day,” she admitted. “Missing my mother occupies nearly all of my emotional energy, I can’t imagine-” There, she had to pause when her throat closed up. “I’m sorry.”

“It gets easier,” Din said, careful to keep his voice low in the space between them. She was a comfortable weight under his arms, the way she fit against his chest seemingly intentional, and he allowed himself to relax for just a breath. It sunk them together as his posture sagged against the wall until he’d tightened his grip enough to keep her there. “That’s a lie, it doesn’t get easier, but I’ve gotten better at living with it. We were in the process of divorcing when they passed so it’s… unresolved, I suppose.”

The world turned in a slow and gentle eddy against the persistence of time, stringing them between point to point until the warm smear of moving on painted them both in a honey warm glow. Din couldn’t have told her when it all changed except to know exactly when it had. Showing her his family felt like giving her his heart and when he touched his mouth to her forehead, it was like giving permission.

Omera knew that she was being foolhardy, picking up on latent emotions that she wasn’t sure he meant to expose her to, but she did it anyway and turned her chin up to watch him up close, their noses brushing almost incidentally before he ducked to catch her mouth on a soft sound that made her flush warm and splotchy. There was no heat behind it, just the simple touch of intention that made her grip tighten against the small of his back and his fingers curl into her hair so that he could tilt her head up a little to deepen the kiss.

Her resolve worked as hard as it could to not tilt her body to press flush, but it was pointless. Omera reached to cup his face with gentle hands, her thumbs sweeping along the curve of his jaw against a rash of stubble and higher to set against his cheeks. She felt the sound he made more than heard it and felt the softest flash of tongue before he pulled back and let his head thump against the wall on a soft laugh. “Okay,” she breathed, her head tipping to rest her forehead against his chin. “That was nice.”

“It was,” he agreed. He stroked careful lines along her spine, dedicated and purposeful as they lingered in the warmth of being that close for a long time. Din couldn’t be sure but he thought that maybe he’d taken himself too seriously for too long, the notion of being an island something he took comfort in instead of rejecting. She was warm and real under his hands there and maybe, just maybe, he could unstick himself from his obstinate sense of duty long enough to feel real again. “I should go.”

Omera didn’t argue with him, choosing instead to tip up onto her toes so that she could press a kiss to the corner of Din’s mouth before she unfolded herself from his grasp and handed him the picture back carefully. “Thank you for sharing them with me,” she said.

“Thank you for letting me.”

**Author's Note:**

> This was an anonymous prompt submitted me to Tumblr (follow me @carasynthiaas) and it grew teeth. Can't wait to see where this goes! For fun, name that crossover!


End file.
